(Image: Pixabay CC0)
(Image: Pixabay CC0) - The search for radio signals from extraterrestrial civilizations has yet to yield evidence of alien technological activity. Research carried out at EPFL suggests we continue searching while optimizing the use of available resources. For over sixty years, amateur and professional astronomers have been monitoring the sky in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI). So far, to no avail. But how should we read the absence of alien radio signals? Is it time we stop looking? Or should we double down and look harder, peering ever deeper into our galaxy? A recent statistical analysis of the sixty-year silence suggests a simple, optimistic explanation and urges the SETI community to continue searching, but to stay patient, as the chances for detecting signals in the coming sixty years are slim. The prevailing explanations for the absence of electromagnetic signals from extraterrestrial societies fall into two extreme categories, says Claudio Grimaldi from EPFL's Laboratory of Statistical Biophysics. The "optimistic" camp holds that we've been using detectors that are not sensitive enough or missed incoming signals because we've been pointing our radio telescopes in the wrong direction.
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